A newly unearthed email shows that an unidentified Fox News producer frantically tried to get the network to keep host Jeanine Pirro off the air for pushing false claims about Dominion Voting Systems stealing the 2020 election for President Joe Biden.
NPR, which obtained a copy of the email and verified its authenticity with two sources, reports that the "anguished" email was sent by an unnamed Fox News producer in November 2020, and it objected to Pirro pushing claims that Dominion's voting machines supposedly "flipped" votes from Trump to Biden.
"The producer warned: Fox cannot let host Jeanine Pirro back on the air," writes NPR. "She is pulling conspiracy theories from dark corners of the Web to justify then-President Donald Trump's lies that the election had been stolen from him."
The warning would prove prescient, as Fox News and other right-wing media organizations are now facing massive defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion over the false claims made about the 2020 election.
In fact, NPR notes that the email is now being used by Dominion's attorneys as proof that Fox News acted with malice by allowing its hosts to stay on the air to push baseless conspiracy theories about its voting machines.
Dominion argues it has suffered irreparable harm as a result of these conspiracy theories and has already had multiple contracts canceled by lawmakers who have bought into Trump's false claims about the 2020 election.